


Workaround

by themadmage



Series: themadmage's Harry Potter one-shots and standalones [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Childhood Trauma, F/M, Inspired by a Facebook/Instagram Post, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 00:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20106229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themadmage/pseuds/themadmage
Summary: The Cupboard Under the Stairs wouldn't leave Harry be.





	Workaround

The damned cupboard wouldn't leave Harry alone.

The cupboard wasn't doing anything.

After the war, after explaining how their relationship had developed in the Forest of Dean to Ron, to Ginny, to Molly and Arthur and the rest of the Weasleys, and essentially to the whole of the wizarding world, and after they'd been to Australia to find Monica and Wendell Wilkins and restore their memories, Harry and Hermione had gotten a muggle house. Hermione wanted to remain close to her muggle roots, and share the parts of the muggle world with Harry that he'd never gotten to properly experience with the Dursleys. She took him bowling, and to movies and coffee shops, and to all of her favorite bookstores, libraries, and museums. And it was truly wonderful, except-

Their house, like many muggle homes, had a Cupboard Under the Stairs. Harry hadn't thought about the cupboard - _his _cupboard - in years. He'd thought that he was over it, with so many other, bigger things to worry about. Now that the war was won, though, now that people weren't dying every day and they weren't living in a tent, it had come back to him in full force.

The Cupboard was just across from the front door, almost exactly as it had been at the Dursleys. Every time Harry saw the Cupboard, he stiffened. His mind froze. He was thrown back to being eight, nine, ten years old and peeking out from the little ventilation slots while he waited for his aunt or uncle to retrieve him for the day. He remembered when his only friends were the spiders that lived in the cupboard with him. 

Every time Harry went up or down the stairs, he was reminded of Dudley stomping above his head so that dust would rain down on him. When he walked past, he had to look twice to make sure that this cupboard didn't lock from the outside several times over. 

The cupboard haunted Harry's thoughts.

Hermione, with her lovely, organized, logical mind, did not always pick up on others' emotional cues quickly. As such, it took her several months to notice Harry's aversion to the staircase. By that time, Harry had taken to apparating rather often. From the first floor to the second, from the sitting room to the kitchen - he almost never seemed to walk anywhere around their house. 

It took her nearly a week after noticing to sit Harry down and ask about it. He tried to brush her off, since Harry's preferred definition of _fine _was what most people would call _not dead_, and by that metric this was hardly anything at all. While Hermione was sometimes slow to notice emotional situations, however, she was an expert at dissecting them and solving them. After fifteen full minutes of needling, reassuring, and just-barely-not-begging, Harry finally opened up.

He told her about the cupboard at the Dursleys, which he had only mentioned before in passing and never explained. He told her about the small, dark space and the loneliness and hopelessness it represented. He told her about how the Cupboard Under the Stairs here reminded him of _his _cupboard, how it made him feel those things again, how he avoided even looking at it by apparating around the house instead of walking past it.

Hermione gave him a hug and a chaste kiss, thanked him for being honest with her, and went to the library.

Days after opening up to Hermione, Harry could have gone swimming in the reading materials she'd provided him. Books on PTSD, flashbacks, and triggers covered every surface in the house. (Except, possibly, the ones in view of the Cupboard Under the Stairs. Harry hadn't checked there.)

Hermione wanted him to see a therapist. Harry thought he'd really rather not. If he was going to go to therapy and work through his issues - _trauma _\- then he would also need to talk about the war. Cedric, Sirius, every death that he'd witnessed and blamed himself for and the horrors he'd witnessed through the soul shard in his scar. In order to talk about those things, he'd need to see someone in the magical world. And in the magical world, he was Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, the Man-Who-Won. No one wanted their hero to have the kind of troubles he had, and no one would be able to keep it quiet that he did. Seeing a magical therapist was simply out of the question.

Books on treatments for PTSD followed. Meditation techniques and controlled exposure therapy. And Harry tried. He really, honestly tried the things that Hermione brought home for him, even when he thought they might not work. This was how Hermione showed her love most naturally, and Harry showed her his love by going along with it and _trying_.

The Cupboard still seemed to loom over him, though, and he continued to avoid it. 

Hermione fretted endlessly over her boyfriend, her Harry. He was hurting, even if he didn't show it, and none of her books and methods were helping as much as they should. Hermione thought that if Harry really gave them a _proper _try, instead of just humoring her, then they might help more. She also knew, though, from what she'd read on supporting someone through trauma, that she could not force him to heal before he was ready. And she saw him try as much as he could for her sake and she loved him for it.

Now, though, she needed to find a different way. Harry was obviously not ready yet to directly confront the traumas he had faced, and this apparating about the house couldn't continue. He needed a different, _quieter_ way that he could avoid this trigger until he was ready to process the trauma, and Hermione was going to find it for him.

Harry apparated from the alley near the Ministry directly into his and Hermione's sitting room, facing away from the entryway, as had become his habit. Hermione was there, as beautiful as ever, but less put-together than he'd seen her since the end of the war. The disheveled look she sported now, however, wasn't accompanied by the exhausted and downtrodden expressions of wartime. Instead she looked a little tired, and hopeful. 

Harry stepped forward and pulled Hermione into his arms, giving her a kiss 'hello'. He pulled back with a smile on his face, and then frowned in slight confusion when he found a chunk of _plaster_ stuck in her wild locks.

"What's this?" He asked as he plucked it out. 

Hermione's hopeful grin grew just a bit. "I've been working on something today, ever since you left. Something for you."

"For me?" Those words warmed his heart - even years after he'd received his first presents, found friends and family willing to go the distance with him, it was still always a bit of a pleasant surprise when someone did something for him.

Hermione nodded vigorously. "I just finished about twenty minutes ago, will you let me show you?"

Harry released his hold on her waist. "Lead on," he told her with a theatrical flourish. 

He hadn't- he'd been caught up in the moment, and he hadn't thought about the Cupboard Under the Stairs, until Hermione started leading him that way. He froze again, as he always did when he was forced to confront the damned Cupboard. After a moment, he noticed Hermione's hand running soothingly over his back.

"It's alright, Harry. I've made it so you don't have to worry anymore, but you just have to look."

Harry forced himself to relax. He was a Gryffindor, house of the brave, and he could look at a damned staircase to find out what his girlfriend had spent the day doing for him. _Especially _if she said it meant he wouldn't have to worry anymore. He gave her a quick nod, and then turned to follow her towards the stairs and their Cupboard-

and he saw right through to the kitchen. 

The plaster in Hermione's hair suddenly made sense, because the entire entryway had been remodeled. The stairs were no longer tucked against the wall, providing a ceiling for a storage space turned nightmare. Instead they reached towards the front door in such a way that they _should _have blocked his view to the kitchen, and they would have except that beneath them there was nothing at all. 

That wasn't true. Against the back wall, beneath the stairs, there was a bookshelf. Hermione couldn't have remodeled a space without putting bookshelves along every available section of wall. But the vast majority of the space between the stairs was completely open on both sides, providing a clear view from the sitting room to the kitchen (or vice versa). The space was open and airy, it was brightly lit, and it could never be described as claustrophobic. He suspected that a space-expansion charm may have been involved in making the staircase fit in the entryway this way, but it wasn't as if they had any muggle friends coming to their muggle home, and it was subtle enough not to worry about.

Harry turned to Hermione, who was watching him with her hopeful grin planted firmly on her face. "You did all of this yourself?" he asked. He resisted adding _for me? _a second time. They'd covered that already.

Hermione nodded excitedly. "It wasn't all that difficult with magic. Molly has spent the last week teaching me the construction and household spells that she and Arthur used to build the Burrow, and I found the design in one of my Mum's home magazines. I had originally considered just removing the cupboard door and plastering over the wall, but I was concerned that since you said the cupboard could be locked up and that your uncle had once boarded up the doors and windows to your house, that it wouldn't be comforting that way. I hoped, though, if you could _see _that there is absolutely nothing under the stairs, that you'd be able to feel comfortable in the house. It did take a teeny, tiny expansion charm on the entryway, but I really don't think you'd notice if you weren't looking for it." She paused in her rambling, and took a breath. "Do you like it?"

Harry grinned at her. "It's perfect," he said roughly as he pulled her into a hug. _You're perfect_, he added silently. He breathed her in, and nearly coughed on the construction dust he inhaled before pulling back from her.

"I love you, Harry." He spent a moment taking in the way her eyes sparkled with happiness right now, and hoped he'd be able to see it every day.

"I love you too, Hermione." He paused. "What do you say we go upstairs together, and I'll help you wash your hair. Just to make sure there isn't any more plaster hiding in your curls."

Eventually, Harry would have to spend more time working on processing his traumas - all of them. Until then, though, and forever after if that was where life took them, Hermione would make sure he never had to live in a house with a cupboard under the stairs. 


End file.
